It has been an excitingly busy start to the year
Career updates
On Friday I had my last day as a Production Scientist. On Monday I start at Oxford Nanoimaging. I’ve enjoyed my time with Alere Toxicology UK (which became part of Abbott) but I want tougher problems to solve. I was fortunate to have good colleagues; I’m coming to the belief that who you work with matters more than what work you do, though the two are linked. The next project will be with a company three orders of magnitude smaller (~100,000 to <100), and the work is likely to be much more challenging. That is very exciting, but also a little daunting.
Catching up with old friends
I have been consistently terrible at keeping in touch with friends. This is in part due to a strong proximity bias favouring interacting with people physically closer to me over interactions I might enjoy more. It is also due to setting unrealistic expectations about how those long overdue catch ups ought to go, i.e. that they somehow have to “make up” for the gap, even though it has never been clear how that might occur. The result is procrastination. This week I was successfully prompted by circumstance, and it was lovely. Two great discussions were on how magnets can affect moral judgements and how positive and negative feedback can shape preferences and identities.
New years day
I stood on Lambeth Bridge in London to see the New Year’s Eve fireworks. It was extremely crowded, but jovial. London’s transport system impressed by coping incredibly well with the flood of people leaving central London.
Writing from home.